Thursday, August 31, 2017

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

This haunting song (see the video and English translation below), with music by Khayyam and lyrics by Kaifi Azmi, is considered to be one of Mohammed Rafi's best. To recover from the melancholy of it takes longer than one usually expects. Rafi's selection of a high octave from the start, as opposed to starting at a lower pitch and gradually reaching a climax of hopelessness, was a novel experiment. It was close to Kaifi Azmi and Rafi's hearts.

I do not know what your eyes keep seeking in meIn this pile of ashThere is no sparkThere is no ember There is no love nowNor memories of itThe fire that devastated my heartNothing of it was leftNothing was savedThe image you have in your eyesI am not that loverBut his quiet pyreIt would be good if this life passed joyfullyBut that is not to beIt will pass in sorrowI have saved the ashes of my devastated loveThey will scatter awayIf you nudge them again and againDesire is a crime, Love is a crimeYearning for love is a sinIn this world there can be no loveHow should I explain the rules of the bazaarOne who has sold his soulCannot pretend to be the buyer﻿

Friday, August 11, 2017

The year was 1968, give or take one, and Sholavaram held its first, perhaps India's first, international car-racing event. Madhavi, you were about six-eight years old? Your parents, Mukund and Geeta, and some friends, I don't know how, succeeded in forcing me to go with them to see the races. Having zero if not minus interest in the zoom-zoooom-zzrrrooom proceedings, where I could not even zzzzzzz, I spend my most of my time looking at people. I was timid about taking photographs without permission, so I mostly took pictures within the group where I was a reluctant participant. I think I remember your name, Madhavi? Having already taken some of your wide-eyed pictures, I got this one, and have prized it.

Like passengers in a railway compartment or at a station, where culturally and linguistically different, divergent people meet and part, our lives also peeled away.

I have several pictures of your mother Geeta, and your grandfather, Pratap Rai Mehta, both in my collection and posted on my blog, as well as a couple of yours. I saw your mother, father and your brand-new (to me) brother last in 1995, at my one-man show sponsored by the US Consulate at Bangalore, but learned very little about you. I wanted to know about you, and more, but in the crowded hall, except for pleasantries, nothing much could be exchanged.

By chance, if you recognise this picture, me or my name, contact me: I am very eager to know about what happened, and is happening, to you. You must be in your early 50s by now; a mother perhaps, and why not also, maybe, a grandmother. I hope very much that life has not wearied you, and that you have still not lost your wide-eyed curiosity.

Vanishing appears to me to be ice eggs nestling in a complex hydrological womb.

Pleasingly
soothing to the eye but almost ominous to consciousness because all our
pretensions notwithstanding, we are most certainly melting down with
the planet and faster than we would like to acknowledge.